


You Shouldn't Do That

by Elizabeth Watson-Holmes (edye327)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Angst, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Parentlock, Retirementlock, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edye327/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Watson-Holmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is training to be a doctor when he meets Sherlock, the black sheep of the Holmes family.</p><p>Angst and fluffiness result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Shouldn't Do That

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for exchangelock, for the lovely watsonsdick! My tumblr is lostinsherlock if you ahem want to go follow.

_01._

"You shouldn't do that."

The pale boy - Sherlock, was it? - cleared his throat a bit derisively and turned to look at John. "Pardon me?"

John coughed. "That." He nodded at the cigarette resting between the man's slender middle and index fingers. "That'll kill you."

Sherlock gave him a long, highly judgmental look and sneered, "Okay, doctor. If you say so." He took a puff and blew a smoke ring in John's face. Well. Point taken.

Come to that, why John had felt compelled to confront the teenager in the first place was beyond him. He was twenty-one, volunteering at the local clinic while he worked on getting a degree, and supposed that it was his compulsion at this point to play nurse wherever he went. Including out into the courtyard for a breath of air between appointments. Which was probably not a good thing, because this behavior was not necessarily always well-received. Sherlock, taking John's silence to be some sort of slight, was scowling from the tips of his ears to the upturned cuffs of his jeans.

"Fuck you," he said conversationally.

"Exhibit A," John muttered.

"What?"

"You're a prime example of why I should keep my mouth shut."

"Oh. Well." This statement seemed to startle Sherlock.

John ran a hand wearily through his hair. "Listen. I've got an uncle who died of lung cancer. He was my role model, better than my dad, my dad was shit at doing anything but yelling at my sister and me and making my mom cry, so please forgive me for not wanting to watch your future disintegrate into hospital bills and coughing fits."

"You..." Sherlock frowned. "You're not just telling me what to do? Being intentionally condescending because you desire to punish me for being difficult?"

What? "Um... no."

Sherlock appeared to struggle with this new information. "You don't know me," he said haltingly, "but you care about my future."

"Er... I suppose so, yes. No less than I care about anyone else's."

"Interesting." He looked at John a bit more keenly now. Too keenly. It was getting rather creepy. If the kid wasn't going to quit the damn habit, then it was nobody's problem but his own.

"I have to go," John said firmly, before Sherlock could say anything further. "Take care of yourself, yeah?"

Sherlock stared after the doctor-in-training for a solid five minutes before dropping the cigarette and slowly putting it out with the toe of his scuffed Chuck Taylors. Then, shrugging against the itch of his flannel shirt, he walked back to school and sat down in the middle of the class period. The teacher raised an eyebrow, a peer asked where Sherlock's motorcycle was, and everyone looked on in surprise and wondered what could have possibly caused such a change of heart.

Sherlock Holmes ignored it all, emboldened by the fact that someone cared.

+

“Wrong,” Sherlock said lazily from the doorway. The sign outside the back room spelled out very clearly “Volunteers Only,” but Sherlock was not exactly one to follow instructions.

John jumped. Sarah, another employee, glanced inquisitively between the two and asked the obvious question. Obvious particularly given the fact that Sherlock stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the immaculate, Purell-on-every-desk sort of environment surrounding him. “Who’s this?”

“Sherlock,” said John, and there was an odd... something, in the way he spoke and looked at the intruder. Sarah felt very suddenly and strongly as if she was trespassing on something private.

“You’re wrong,” said Sherlock, striding across the room to stand before the doctor. “Sarah.” He nodded at her.

“How do you know my... I’m sorry, have we met?”

His eyes flickered towards her. “No.”

“So how do you -”

“You were wrong. The patient clearly doesn’t have mono. If you’d actually looked at her symptom history rather than trying to seduce John, you’d see lab results from twelve years ago which show that she has already been exposed to Epstein-Barr.”

Sarah flushed at this pronouncement. “I wasn’t - I - okay,” she stammered.

John cleared his throat. “He’s right,” he said, gesturing to the manila folder that had been sitting on Sarah’s desk, then added hurriedly, “but it’s fine, it was easy to miss -”

“It wasn’t,” said Sherlock.

“Sherlock,” John said warningly. They made eye contact; Sarah started to back out of the room and leave them to whatever they had going on (she wasn’t stupid, the chemistry was blatant) but John followed her into the hallway.

“Look, you guys obviously have your own thing,” she started before John could open his mouth. She was sure he had excuses, none of which were sincere. Still, figuring that she deserved some explanation of the stranger who’d just burst into the clinic after hours, Sarah asked, “How do you know him, anyway?”

“Ah. That. He’s, um.”

“And how _old_ is he, for god’s sake?”

“Er... seventeen.”

Sarah gaped at him. “He’s a minor.”

“It’s not like anything’s going on there,” John said, sounding both defensive and alarmed at the implication.

“Even I’m not that dense, John.”

“I’m not gay, first of all," he paused, probably questioning the validity of this statement, then shook his head quickly, "and yeah, he’s a minor, and he’s not exactly got it together, so I... hang out with him sometimes. Could use a friend, I reckon."

Bisexual, then. “Straight” flew out the window the second he locked eyes with Sherlock. Sarah shook her head, but picked her battles and went for, “He seems smart.”

“He is.” A look passed over John’s face, something like wonder, perhaps even fondness. “He tries and works hard, despite what others think.”

“How long have you guys known each other?”

“Less than a year.”

“And he just barges into the clinic whenever he feels like it?”

“Whenever he knows I’m there, yeah. If he can get out of other commitments.” This was said with a sort of pained expression.

Sarah effectively put two and two together. Sherlock's demeanor, his clothes; on external appearance alone she might mistake him for Dally from _The Outsiders_. “Drug dens?” she said softly, and John nodded.

Sherlock swept out of the office before John could say anything further. “John,” he said briskly, “we have to stop for gas.”

“Oh, he has a car?” asked Sarah.

Sherlock eyed her very critically. “Motorcycle,” he replied, then turned to John. “We haven’t all day.”

 _Sorry_ , John mouthed as he trotted along behind the seventeen-year-old.

Sarah didn’t bother asking him to call her later.

_02._

_Five years later_

"You shouldn't do that." Sherlock grabbed Phil and shoved him roughly aside. "Leave him alone."

"Who the hell are you?"

Sherlock's gaze flickered to John, who was staring wide-eyed, mouth slightly agape. "A friend," he said shortly.

"Do you know this guy?" Phil asked disbelievingly.

John paused. One second, two seconds, three, four... "Yes," he said, licking his lips. "Sherlock. He - I haven't seen him in five years."

"Four years, eleven months, two weeks, six days," Sherlock corrected. He turned back to Phil. "Now. I believe I made myself quite clear. You are not to harass John Watson ever again."

"Oh, yeah? What's a skinny kid like you gonna -"

Sherlock's wiry frame gave him both muscle and agility, as was demonstrated by the speed with which he had the man trapped again. "I have no intention of harming you," he said calmly but dangerously, firming his grip on Phil's shoulder, "unless you continue to persist in your efforts to intimidate and take advantage of my... of John. In which case, rest assured, I can inflict a great deal of damage, although I should think the owner of this bar would find it cumbersome and unwelcome to be faced with screaming emergency vehicles at such a high-grossing evening. So, you will back off, and there will be no ambulances. Are we in agreement?"

"Sherlock, please, I really - this was uncalled for and I was managing the situation fine -"

Sherlock waved John off impatiently and shook Phil by the collar. "Are. We. In. Agreement?"

"Yes," Phil said, struggling despite his considerable size, which in any other situation (when not faced with an overprotective Sherlock Holmes) should normally give him an advantage. "Just fucking leave me alone, Jesus Christ."

"Fine." Sherlock let go and crossed his arms.

"Fine." Phil smoothed out his shirt.

"Leave," Sherlock said, eyes flashing when the man continued to stand there.

"Listen, man, I just wanted to have a nice chat with -"

Sherlock frowned and snapped, "Oh, stop it. You weren't having a nice chat. You were invading his personal space and making lewd comments which John, kind as he is, tolerated. Now leave."

"You god damn -"

"Fuck off," Sherlock said succinctly. "I have a motorcycle and twenty thugs who owe me a multitude of favors. It will take me less than twenty seconds to deduce your girlfriend's phone number and inform her of your antics here, as well as that dental hygienist from when you went on 'holiday' with work. Given the amount of additional information I've gleaned in our charming time together, I would avoid angering me further if I were you. You may grow to regret it."

"I..."

Sherlock tapped his foot on the floor. John was gazing at him in mingled confusion (ah, yes. He was probably wondering how Sherlock had happened to be in the same place at the same time when they were a good thousand miles from their last meeting), shock (perhaps he had not expected Sherlock to resurface in his life? Silly notion, that. Sherlock would always come back), gratitude (ironic that he was grateful, given the handful of times back at home that he'd saved Sherlock's ass), and (could it be?) admiration.

God, that face. This was all so, so worth it, to see John look at him like that.

Sherlock preferred not to dwell on these particular feelings, not now, and focused on the task at hand. "I'm waiting for you," he reminded Phil.

"I..."

"Mm."

"You have no -"

"Yes, actually, I do."

"But -"

Sherlock tsked softly. "No. No, don't even bother with that argument. Obvious."

"You fucking -"

Sherlock arched an eyebrow. "Ah. How delicately put."

"I..."

"Back to that one, then."

"You..."

"Yes."

Phil appeared to struggle for a moment, then gave up. "You bastard!" he shouted, and flounced off.

"So," Sherlock said, fixing John with the sort of intensity that left the latter breathless, "how have you been?"

+

They ended up going for a walk by the river while John talked about his time in Afghanistan and Sherlock tried to focus on the conversation and not their shoulders brushing together.

“You look better,” John finally said, pausing at the end of the pier and smiling fondly. He brushed a hand down Sherlock’s arm. “Decided to start eating, have we?”

“I quit smoking, too.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Sherlock took a quick breath, then turned to face the doctor. “John, I’m very glad that you’re back, and that you’re safe.” It came out sounding far more forlorn and shy than he’d intended it to.

Something in John’s gaze softened. “I am too,” he confessed.  “I’ve actually missed you. I know it’s odd because we didn’t... talk a lot before - I mean, aside from you coming to the clinic and harassing the secretary and barging into appointments to drag me out on that goddamn motorcycle - do you still have that, by the way? - but... I missed you. And I’m very sorry I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye.”

“Well,” said Sherlock tentatively, “maybe you could say a proper hello now.” _And never leave again._

John chuckled. “I suppose I could, couldn’t I?” He gave a nervous laugh (why nervous?) before clearing his throat and taking several steps closer, until he was almost pressed against Sherlock, no doubt feeling the racing of Sherlock’s heart, and he tilted his head up, murmuring, “Hello.”

“Hello, John,” said Sherlock, paralyzed, and John kissed him.

_03._

_Four and a half years later_

“You shouldn’t do that.”

John whirled around and glared, snapping harshly, “ _When_ , Sherlock?”

Sherlock took a few steps backward, startled. “When what?”

John slammed the plate down on the kitchen table. “When are you leaving?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“When. Are. You. Leaving. Me.”

“I’m not - never.”

John gave a derisive cackle. “Because you’ve been irritable and jumpy all week. You rejected me when I tried to kiss you goodnight, and everything I’m doing is wrong. I organized your papers wrong - _your_ papers, Sherlock! Not mine! You should’ve done it in the first place - and then I put things in the wrong order in the fridge and now apparently I’m preparing dinner wrong and I ‘shouldn’t do that’ - I’m the one doing all the cooking around here, if you hadn’t noticed! - when you explicitly turned down my offer of take-out and I don’t know what’s going on but clearly you aren’t interested in this relationship anymore and...” He swallowed very hard, his Adam’s apple quivering with suppressed tears, and Sherlock was horrified. Did John honestly think...? It couldn’t be. “Look,” the doctor muttered, grabbing his keys, “I’m off to the clinic. I can handle a few more patients than I have now, and that’ll keep me out of the house for a bit until I find somewhere else to live.”

“You cannot possibly... John!” Sherlock grabbed his boyfriend by the arm. “I’m not... I have not treated you well,” he conceded. “And for that I beg forgiveness. I... I’ve been thinking about something, and it has been an incredibly frustrating case, very hard to crack, and I... when I get anxious, I take out that stress on you. But rest assured, leaving you is the very last thing I would ever want to do.” Sherlock lowered his voice and leaned closer to John. “You are my world. You are the only person who has ever cared about me, and the only person I have cared about; surely you are not blind to this fact.”

“So what’s this problem, then?” John challenged him, though he hadn’t stormed out yet.

“I...” This was not going according to plan, not at all. Mycroft was still finalizing the details, despite Sherlock’s impatient threats regarding what would happen should his brother take any longer. “I don’t think...”

“What?”

“I was supposed to -”

“Just tell me,” John said sharply. Something like hope was creeping across the doctor’s face, making Sherlock’s heart skip a beat.

“Well then.” Sherlock faltered, his original plan falling by the wayside as sentiment prevailed. “I love you more than anything. You know that by now.”

“Still nice to hear once in awhile,” John grumbled.

“And,” said Sherlock, “I was wondering if... well, Mycroft, being the incompetent -”

“Sherlock.”

“Ah. Right. Irrelevant.” Sherlock cleared his throat and fingered the velvet box that he’d been carrying around with him the past four weeks. “I believe this is how it’s done.” And he got down on one knee, and John said yes.

_04._

_One year later_

"You shouldn't do that," Mycroft said, giving Jim a bland smile. "I must insist that you vacate the premises immediately."

"I just have a present for the happy couple," Jim said in a sing-song voice. "I'll be out in a jiffy."

"Yes," Mycroft said monotonically, "but we don't have a jiffy. In fact, we don't even have a nanosecond. Particularly for interfering, jobless men such as yourself.”

Jim’s eyes crinkled dangerously at the corners. “Oh, Mycroft.” He clucked softly. “I do so love your brotherly compassion. You’ve ruined a few too many plans of mine. A man like me can only tolerate so much misbehavior.”

“How terribly gratifying to hear,” said Mycroft, though it was clear that he meant the exact opposite. “So. The present.” He nodded at the bag in Jim’s hand. “I’ll take that, and you will be escorted out momentarily.”

Jim clutched at the package. “No,” he snapped, then seemed to correct himself, assuming a cool facade again. “I think I’m going to give this to Sherlock personally. As a... memento.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes. “I think you’re going to comply.” Quite deliberately, he grabbed the gift, walked around Jim to the opposite side of the room, and chucked it into the trashcan before returning. “Goodbye,” he added oh-so-politely.

Jim stood there, glowering. “I don’t -”

“I am aware that you resent my brother for various reasons, some of which are entirely valid. However, this fact does not give you the right to ruin his wedding day. I allowed you to go far with many of your enterprises before I became involved. Sherlock is insufferable. You are more so.”

“Which means you are...?”

“Perfect,” Mycroft answered with a straight face.

Jim stared at him. When he made no indication that it was a joke (rather, he looked back with the same mild disinterest as before), Jim laughed, loud and disbelieving. “You really think... you poor, poor man.”

“Mm, yes,” said Mycroft. “Glad that you agree. Off you go, then. Hello, Anthea.” Anthea, an undercover security guard hired to prevent exactly this sort of situation, nodded at him and then gazed fixedly at Jim.

“You’re leaving now,” she finally said with a little exasperated sigh, and moved to grab Jim, who was caught off-guard by her vise-like grip and struggled rather more than was respectable for an adult male.

“What a charming wedding crasher,” Mycroft said dryly. He smirked and stood quite immovably in the doorway; Jim had no choice but to go with the woman.

“Give John and Sherlock my best wishes,” he snarled, and stalked off.

_05._

_Two years later_

"You shouldn't do that." John grabbed Sherlock's wrist lightly, a warning. "He's sleeping; he'll wake up."

"Do be quiet, John, you'll wake him." Sherlock frowned and continued to reach for their son.

"Oh, for... did you hear anything I said just now?" John ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

"John, I want to hold him," Sherlock said firmly.

"Fine," hissed John, "but you're the one staying up with him until three in the morning this time."

Sherlock didn't pay his husband any mind, opting to cradle Hamish instead. Since Hamish's birth (it was an open adoption; the mother, Molly, and her husband Greg were delightful but not ready to raise a child yet) Sherlock had warmed more and more to the prospect of fatherhood. Although he still acted as though the baby was liable to break, he was reasonably reasonable about diaper changing, and as far as John could tell, Sherlock was thoroughly enjoying the experience.

"Do you want me to leave?" John murmured as Sherlock ran a finger delicately across the sleeping boy's brow. He took Sherlock's silence as a yes, and began to slowly ease out of the room so he could go have feelings elsewhere (being the besotted idiot that he was, his heart swelled absurdly every time Sherlock expressed sentiment or did anything cute or walked or talked or breathed). Right as he reached the door, Sherlock said,

"Stay."

John came a little closer. "Sorry, what?"

Sherlock sighed and beckoned with a finger. "Come back, John."

John obliged.

"Look, he hasn't woken yet," Sherlock whispered, and wrapped his available arm round John. "He looks so... undisturbed when he's sleeping. How do they do it?"

"How do what do what?"

"How do babies do it? Shut off their brains just like that."

"Well, they do need a great deal of sleep. So I suppose a byproduct of falling asleep is 'shutting off’ their brains."

"Mm, well." Sherlock sighed and pressed his lips to Hamish's forehead. "I like it."

"So do I," John whispered, gazing down at their son and lightly touching the shock of dark hair that looked so much like Sherlock's. He leaned his cheek against his husband's shoulder, letting his own tired eyes flutter shut as Sherlock kissed his temple, swaying gently to soothe Hamish when the baby began to stir. "So do I."

_06._

_Fifteen and a half years later_

“You shouldn’t do that.” Sherlock’s head was bowed, voice raspy, but he was steady enough to reach out a hand and guide Hamish away from the hospital bed.

“I was just going to move the tubes a bit, he looks uncomfortable,” Hamish protested, but quelled at the expression on his father’s face.

“He’s going to be uncomfortable. It was a pile-up, Hamish. Fifteen injured.”

“They said a motorcycle was involved,” said Hamish, beginning to pace. “Didn’t you have a motorcycle?”

Sherlock was silent for a moment. Then, “Yes,” he said, in a guarded tone that gave his son pause.

“What happened to it?”

“I... too many memories,” said Sherlock lamely.

Hamish frowned. “Why?”

“I was...” Sherlock shut his eyes. Hamish pulled up a plastic chair next to him and waited. “When I met Dad, I was troubled. Some might describe me as stand-offish. I associated with ‘bad’ crowds and people... feared me.”

“Oh. Well, were you badass, at least?”

“Hardly.” Sherlock gave a short bark of humorless laughter. “Anyway. That was my reputation. I was the bad boy, the black sheep, of the Holmes legacy.” He hesitated. “You are aware by now that I come from an auspicious family.”

“Yeah. You’re rich.”

“Essentially, yes. But most of that money’s safely in the bank.”

“So what does the motorcycle have to do with it?”

“I’m getting to that. Like I said, I was the black sheep. I first encountered your father when he was training to be a doctor and he told me off for smoking. Nobody until then had ever cared about me or my health - nobody who wasn’t trying to glean some benefits from the association. I was untouchable and intimidating, and my trademark was the fact that I’d zip round town on this motorcycle. No helmet, just a t-shirt and a cigarette packet tucked into my pocket. I was unhappy. I was not all too fond of myself, or of my life, and meeting Dad changed everything.” He drew an uneven breath. “Everything.” His eyes flickered to the motionless form on the bed and then to his son. “I deleted the motorcycle because it reminded me of who I had been before I met John, and I never want to think of those times again. I want my life to be consumed by him, and I always will.”

Hamish seemed to struggle for words. Sherlock, in an outpouring of affection and sympathy for this poor sixteen-year-old boy next to him, pulled his son into a brief hug. “Dad will be okay,” Hamish whispered.

“Perhaps,” said Sherlock wearily.

“I think he feels the same, you know.”

“What?”

“He loves you.”

“Well, yes, of course. There is a reason that we got married.”

“No, I mean that. Everything you said. About wanting your life consumed by him. He feels the same. You shouldn’t think that he doesn’t.”

Sherlock’s mouth quirked in a sad smile at this. “There have been times throughout our relationship that I doubted that very much.”

“But you shouldn’t,” Hamish said emphatically.

“Maybe,” said Sherlock. He stood up, suddenly needing to move, and found himself at John’s bedside. “John,” he said very softly and very very tenderly.

And John, despite the doctors’ grim faces and scribbles on clipboards and beeping electronic monitors, opened his eyes.

_Epilogue_

“You shouldn’t do that,” Hamish said, trying to push his father back into the wheelchair. John waved his son off. “Come on, Dad, Papa can walk better, he’ll be here -”

“Bullshit. I want to see my husband.”

“You’re not young anymore -”

“I want to see him,” said John firmly, and managed to get onto his feet. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Hamish exchanged looks with his biological sister, 29-year-old Sam, who had graciously offered to drive them to the airport, where Sherlock was returning from Mycroft’s funeral.

“John,” Sam said gently, “Sherlock will be here really soon, I promise, and if we could keep you safe until then that would be great because I’m sure he would appreciate seeing you all in one piece.”

“Since your accident, you know your hip hasn’t been the best and you’re getting on -”

“Hamish,” said Sam, nudging him.

John, having spotted Sherlock, had risen from his wheelchair and was now walking towards his husband. “He’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” John breathed, and suddenly he was walking perfectly fine, more perfectly fine than he had in the past decade, and Sam’s breath caught as she watched the two men make eye contact.

Sherlock, for his part, was impatiently shoving people aside to make his way to John. He smiled, crow’s feet crinkling, and the smile became a beam the closer he got. And then they were embracing, John’s head notched below Sherlock’s chin, looking at one another as if they were the only two in the airport, in the country, in the entire goddamn world.

“I missed you,” John said as they pulled apart and linked hands.

“And I you,” Sherlock replied, unable to resist the temptation to stoop and plant a tender kiss on John’s temple. “Ah, hello, Hamish.”

“Hey, Papa,” said Hamish, giving him a one-armed squeeze.

Sam received a nod of acknowledgement - hard as she tried, Sherlock was still a difficult nut to crack and had been politely aloof from their first meeting; at least John was warm and friendly and they had become quite close when he wasn’t pining after Sherlock - and after no greeting followed, she held up the keys. “Ready?”

“More than,” said Sherlock, and John grinned up at him.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!! Kudos and comments are much appreciated.


End file.
